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the advanced posts were carried, when count BOOK d'Estaing appeared in view with a far superior force, having on board a large body of troops, with which he hoped to effect the entire reduction of the English islands. The squadron of admiral Barrington consisted only of three ships of the line, two of fifty guns, and three frigates, which he stationed across the entrance of the careenage, supported by several batteries erected on shore. On the morning of the 15th of December the French admiral bore down with ten sail of the line, but met with so gallant a reception, that he thought proper in a short time to draw off. In the afternoon he renewed the attack with his whole squadron, and a furious cannonade, directed chiefly against admiral Barrington's division, was kept up for several hours, without making any impression upon the English line; and the French admiral was again obliged to desist from his attack. He now landed a body of five thousand troops, and putting himself at their head, marched with great resolution to the assault of the British lines: but they were received by general Meadows with the same determined valour as they had before experienced from admiral Barrington; and being repulsed with great loss, the count re-embarked his troops, and left the island to its fate. It soon after surrendered to the British arms on honorable terms

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BOOK of capitulation, and this conquest was considered as much more than an equivalent for the loss of 1778. Dominique.

On the continent of America the war still raged with dreadful and unremitted malignity. In consequence of the horrid mode of warfare adopted by the court of Great Britain, which in the midst of pleasure and festivity issued its orders to desolate and destroy *, an expedition was undertaken by a colonel Butler, in conjunction with one Brandt, an half Indian by birth, and a man beyond example cruel and ferocious, against the beautiful and flourishing settlement of Wyoming, This was an infant rising colony, situated on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, consisting of eight townships, in a country and climate luxuriantly fertile.

In the month of July, 1778, the enemy appeared in force to the number of about sixteen hundred men, of whom about one-fourth were

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1778.

Indians, and immediately invested the fort. The BOOK commandant knowing its inability to make any effectual defence, dispatched a flag to colonel Butler, to know what terms he would grant on a surrender; to which he replied in two words, THE HATCHET; sending in at the same time the bloody scalps of the victims who had already fallen into his hands. The garrison, though resolute to sell their lives as dear as possible, were soon overpowered; and the savage conquerors, after gratifying their infernal rage by a most bloody military execution, shut up the greater part of the survivors in the barracks, to which they set fire, and consumed the whole in one general blaze. The entire settlement was now delivered up to all the horrors of Indian barbarity, of which the detail is not to be endured. A terrestrial paradise was in a short time converted into a frightful waste; and men, women, and children, underwent one common butchery, in all the possible varieties of torture. A provincial officer, of the name of Bedlock, being stripped naked, had his body stuck full of sharp pine splinters; and a heap of knots of the same wood being then piled around him, the whole was set on fire two other officers also, captains Ransey and Durgie, being thrown alive into the flames. Such are the accursed consequences of that princely ambition which is exalted so high

BOOK above the level of common life as to admit

of no sympathy with human misery. Feeling deeply for the honor of Britain, a veil has been perhaps too partially cast over the enormities committed by the Indians employed in the northern expedition, and in other parts of the continent. There are indeed degrees of human depravity and wickedness creative of sensations which no tongue can express, and no language impart*.

To descend to what must be regarded as an authorized and civilized mode of warfare, it is necessary to mention that major-general Grey, an officer who had repeatedly distinguished himself by his military skill and courage, was detached in the month of September from New York on an expedition to a place called FairHaven, on the coast of New England, where he destroyed about seventy sail of shipping, together with the magazines, wharfs, stores, &c.; and proceeding to Martha's Vineyard, a beautiful island in the vicinity, he carried off

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an immense booty in oxen and sheep, which BOOK afforded a welcome supply to the army at New York.

In a short time after this, the same officer, acting under the direction of lord Cornwallis, surprised in the night, asleep and naked, a regiment of American light-horse, stationed near the right bank of the North River. Quarter being refused, and the men wholly incapable of resistance, a terrible execution took place, which the congress in a subsequent remonstrance scrupled not to stigmatize as a massacre in cold blood." A similar enterprise was undertaken with similar success by captain Ferguson, against a detached corps of Pulawski's legion of lightinfantry; and the Americans were not a little embarrassed to conjecture what those worse extremes of war could be, which the manifesto of the commissioners menaced them with in the future conduct of it.

An undertaking of greater importance was now determined upon by sir Henry Clinton, who detached a considerable body of troops under the command of colonel Campbell, convoyed by a squadron under sir Hyde Parker, to attempt the recovery of the province of Georgia-gene ral Prevost, governor of East Florida, having at the same time orders to co-operate with them. On the 23d of December, 1778, the whole arma

1778